


Undercurrent

by strawberriesandtophats



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Chronic Pain, Fluff, Headaches & Migraines, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mutual Pining, Richelieu Lives AU, Spanish Prison AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-24
Updated: 2017-06-24
Packaged: 2018-11-18 15:48:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11293803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strawberriesandtophats/pseuds/strawberriesandtophats
Summary: It was one thing to habitually spend time with the man who could change the fate of entire countries with a stroke of his pen, to argue with him and to scheme alongside him. It was another thing entirely to love him.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FreyaLor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreyaLor/gifts).



All soldiers learned to distinguish between screams. It was a vital part of their survival to be able to hear if a scream was one of rage or pain or horror, as all demanded a different approach.

When Treville heard the muffled, half-broken sob that would otherwise have been a scream if the one making the sound was not holding it back, he started running. The Louvre was a large building, but the scream had been loud enough that Treville had heard it and so the one who screamed must be close by.

The next sound was louder, a proper scream that told of horrific pain. Treville picked up the pace, taking two steps at a time as he ran up the staircase.

Richelieu.

It was the Cardinal’s voice.

Treville’s heart missed a beat and the courtiers in the hallway stilled.

It had only been a few months since he’d gotten Richelieu back from that damned prison.  He’d throw himself in front of any bullet if it meant keeping the Cardinal in Paris. He barely noticed his surroundings as he ran, shouting at courtiers to move away from him so he could keep up his speed and ignored their indignant remarks.

Treville kicked open the door to Richelieu’s office, splintering the wood. Richelieu was lying on the floor behind his desk, a heap of red cloth. Treville sprinted across the room and threw himself on his knees, grabbing Richelieu’s wrist to check his pulse.

The pulse was strong.

Richelieu was still breathing, even if his gasps were shallow and his face was grey with exhaustion. There was no pool of blood on the floor and no unwelcome visitors hiding in the corners.

“It’s nothing,” Richelieu said, sounding annoyed. He looked at Treville as if Treville was doing something foolish yet laudable, which was his standard facial expression when they were in the same room. But Richelieu’s voice was weak and he was shaking. “I fell of my chair and onto the floor. A trivial matter.”

“Don’t lie to me,” Treville said and helped Richelieu up to a seated position. “Do you really think I don’t recognize the symptoms of exhaustion?”

Richelieu glared at him, but did not move away. Instead he let himself be supported and closed his eyes, as if he was gathering strength.

“Does your head pain you?” Treville asked, trying to sound as gentle as he could. It was likely that someone else had heard the screams and rushed to call a doctor and Treville needed to know what to tell the doctor when he showed up. Or if the king himself showed up. Well, If Richelieu would allow him to say anything at all to them about this whole situation, which was not likely.

Still, it was important to know if this was one of Richelieu’s usual headaches or something else. He looked around the room, but saw no traces of food and no wineglass or bottles, so it was unlikely that Richelieu had been poisoned just a few minutes ago. Ripping his clothes off to check for injuries was not a good option as the door was still open and Richelieu would not be happy about his clothing being ruined.

Treville knew about Richelieu’s headaches and how to read the outward signs that Richelieu was not able to mask, usually because the pain was too much to bear. And if you spend enough time with someone, you will learn to read their mannerisms and tells, even their secrets by the way they try to hide them. Richelieu always tried to hide his own pain, preferring to keep working until he could no longer hide behind clever remarks or his body would betray him by shaking uncontrollably or collapsing entirely. And these were just the signs that Treville had seen in public, when the Cardinal had been too tired to notice that Treville was the only one left in the room with him. Perhaps he had noticed and believed that Treville would never tell and never run, no matter how dire their situation became. God knew that Treville had enough chances to gather his bags and leave the Musketeers and Paris behind. But he had not.

“It never truly stops,” Richelieu muttered, looking down at his hands. “The pain just sleeps and then wakes again to torment me. Perhaps it is punishment for my sins.”

“You need to rest,” Treville said, tilting his head to gesture to the window, where the sun was setting.

Richelieu said nothing, but kept looking down at his hands, as if he was inwardly cursing them for refusing to stop shaking and therefore not allowing him to sit back down at his desk and continue writing.

Treville looked at Richelieu’s hands too, which were as thin and pale as the rest of him. They shook more than they did before he’d spent time in prison, which was something that Richelieu seemed to resent. Treville crushed the urge to take Richelieu’s hands in his and make some reassuring comment. He wasn’t a trainee Musketeer who’d just arrived in Paris, after all. Making any kind of comment would just result in an argument about Richelieu’s health.

Instead, Treville sat down beside Richelieu, his back to the wall. Richelieu smiled at him, folding his hands on his lap and closing his blood shot eyes.

People had different views on how their bodies effected their daily lives. Some adorned their bodies with fine cloth and perfumes, others took pleasure in how strong or nimble or tall their body was. Some disliked their bodies or thought that it could have been better in some way or another. There were as many views as there were humans on the earth.

Treville thought of his own body as a tool. A battered and old tool, but an effective one. It still worked well enough.

He could still fight, even if his knees protested in the mornings and his shoulder ached constantly. Most days he could ignore the pain, but there were days where it felt like many of the old battle wounds had never fully healed. Pain was a low price to pay to be able to continue working. As soon as he'd let in more than just taking a day or two off when the pain was intolerable, rumors of his retirement would resurface like a horrible disease.

He didn’t have a mind like Richelieu, who did not need to throw himself into a fight armed only with a sword and a musket to prove his worth. Treville could only rely on his body to serve him and his own actions to protect what he loved. Treville was not the sort of man you asked to recite poetry or even make speeches of the sort that did not involve shouting battle strategies or orders.

But Treville saw the look in the new Musketeer’s eyes when he taught them how to stand properly when holding a sword, how to hold a musket and take care of their uniform. He could see his own worth in his men’s eyes, who would make admiring sounds and watch him intensely as he demonstrated a move to effectively thrown an enemy over one’s shoulder in one move. They could see his life-long training in his every movement: how he held his body and instinctively surveyed each location and assessed how many exits there were, how vulnerable it would be to an attack.

And because he knew that his body was a tool, he tried to take good care of it. Every day he would train at the garrison until his muscles ached and his legs shook. Until sweat ran down his temples and soaked his shirt. He made sure to eat enough food at the garrison, simple but filling meals that would keep him going throughout the day. His bed was nothing more than a cot, but it did not do to become used to better ones, not with the life he'd already led. A softer bed would mean that the transition to the battlefield would be inconvenient, even if it would be a welcome treat at times. Becoming used to a nice bed was one thing, sleeping in one occasionally was simply a luxury. That is what he told his men, who would make sly remarks to each other about finding a fine mistress who would be willing to share her large bed, while her husband was away.

They rarely asked Treville about his own sleeping arrangements, as it was well known that Treville had no lover, and most of his men believed that his only love was France, or quite possibly Honor. So, they left him alone, considering him to be the sort that would not tell about his love life. When they had pushed him he’d simply mention that he had all those Musketeers to look after and train as well as political affairs and whatnot to keep himself occupied, adding a mistress to the mix would only serve to compliment matters. He repeated that explanation until they stopped asking.

The fact that he did not have a mistress didn't mean that he had never been in love. He had been, and he still was. He knew that there was no possibility that he would ever even make the smallest hint to who it was, or even that he was enamored with someone. Being in love would simply be considered to be a weakness by many of those who believed that he had no place at the Louvre or as the Captain of the Musketeers. And weaknesses were dangerous in his line of work. They got you killed.

When Richelieu had been kidnapped by the Spanish and everyone thought he was dead, Treville had tried to adjust to a life without him. Showing any outward signs of grief publicly would not have been a very wise move. After all, his public relationship with Richelieu was one of grudging teamwork in-between loud arguments. He'd only made a few comments about how different life without Richelieu was, and then only to his men, and once or twice to the king himself. Then he’d bit his tongue.

Anything else would have been dangerous.

He’d lived with the undercurrent of his love for Richelieu sloshing against the wall he’d built around his mind to ignore such thoughts. But his feelings for Richelieu had nonetheless influenced many of his actions and decisions and life for years. Sometimes these feelings had just made him lash out and other times he’d tried his best to ignore them, but they had never disappeared, not even when Treville thought Richelieu was dead.

It was one thing to habitually spend time with the man who could change the fate of entire countries with a stroke of his pen, to argue with him and to scheme alongside him. It was another thing entirely to _love_ him.

You made deals with the devil, but you didn't let him close to you, and you certainly didn't yearn for him when he was gone.

No one had to know about the nights where he'd lain still in his bed, thinking about how red silk had slid over stone and smooth pavement. And how those slender hands had moved when Richelieu had been thinking and planning, a smirk on his face.  Treville had woken up in the morning and scrubbed his face with a damp towel, dressed himself and kept up his training regimen. He'd lived, trying to ignore the insistent ache in his chest when Richelieu failed to appear in the Louvre. Some part of Treville had always waited for Richelieu to step out of some sort of shadow or hidden corridor, robes sweeping the floor behind him as he walked towards Treville, as if he'd never left at all.

Treville had buried his feelings for the man alongside Richelieu’s body, figuratively shoveling them into a vast empty pit in his head that he was never to come near again. He'd stared at the coffin and let his heart break just before he'd locked it away, out of reach.

And then Treville had found Richelieu alive in a Spanish prison and brought him back. He'd ridden across France, his breathing shallow and heart hammering so loudly in his chest that he'd barely heard his own thoughts. He hadn't been able to think of much else than getting Richelieu back to Paris, back to see doctors and medics, back where he belonged. He’d barely noticed the Musketeers riding alongside him, both on his way to the prison and on the way back. He’d just held onto Richelieu’s bony body and hoped that they’d make it to Paris alive.

Recovery had taken time, but now Richelieu was truly back, spending his days walking beside him as they followed the king.

Well, you had to make sacrifices in this life.

And the reward had been more than enough to make up for time watching courtiers flinch at the sight of Richelieu's smile and the King's annoyed expression as they talked about diplomats that had arrived from Spain to make amends.

 The sound of Richelieu's fine boots on the floor was like a cool breeze on a stifling summer day and the faint scent of his perfume as they walked was as delicious as the weight of a perfectly balanced sword in his hands.

And now they were alone, sitting on the floor of Richelieu’s office.


	2. Chapter 2

"Remember the promises you made, Treville," Richelieu said, glancing at him. His voice was low, as if he could not bear to hear any loud sounds for the rest of the evening. He still sounded annoyed, as if he thought the silence between them had lasted too long.

The sun was low on the horizon and the room was bathed in gold.

"I remember them all," Treville said, furrowing his brow.

What in the world was Richelieu talking about?

Had he hit his head?

Treville had made promises every day, to his men, to his king and to his country. He'd promised to protect them.

In the Musketeers, one has the duty to protect not only one's subordinates, but also the ones who are equal in rank but also those who were higher. And Richelieu was a man that was so important to France that things had started to unravel the minute he'd been found supposedly dead.

Richelieu appeared to view his body as an inconvenience. Treville had watched for years as the man tested it almost to destruction, barely eating enough to keep it going and favoring spending his nights writing endless letters and reading until he could no longer keep his eyes open instead of sleeping like a sane human being.

Had Richelieu been one of Treville’s young Musketeers, Treville would have sat him down in the garrison and had a stern talk with him about the importance of eating and sleeping for the sake of his health. He’d seen this happen with some farm boys, who were used to watching the flock for days on end when the fox and wolves were near their land. Usually he’d just sit in front of the cadets as they ate and talked to some of his men so they’d keep an eye on them too.

Shoving food in front of Richelieu wasn’t really an option, nor was talking to the servants to make sure that the man actually slept.

So Treville had just watched Richelieu run himself into the ground on a daily basis for years, careful to keep a respectable distance, at least when Richelieu’s mood was foul. Treville knew that he was not a subtle person, and that any move he might make would probably cause the Cardinal to snap at him and ruin whatever tentative truce they had at the moment, between fights.

The years had passed. They drifted closer and closer to each other, clinging to each other and shoving the other one away in an eternal dance.

And now Treville inched closer to Richelieu, who did not move away. He leaned closer, as if he could not restrain himself.

"I'm sure I've got more promises that I can make," Treville said, looking at the Cardinal.

"Is that so?" Richelieu asked, tilting his head. The tone was the one he used when he had realized that someone had offered him something of incredible value, testing the waters to see if he had any chance of grabbing what was being offered.

"Yes," Treville said and smiled when Richelieu nodded. Treville helped him up and Richelieu headed back to his desk.

 “You brought me back,” Richelieu said, sitting down with a barely concealed huff of relief. “Not the king and not any council. Just you.”

“Well, my men-“ Treville began.

“Your men are good at being loud and brash,” Richelieu said. “They would not have found me as fast as you did.”

“Still, I had help,” Treville argued.

“You left the king unprotected in Paris so you could go on a wild search of a man who was considered to be dead, Treville,” Richelieu said, ignoring the fact that Treville had just spoken. “Did you even realize how dangerous-“

“Don’t you think it was worth it?” Treville shot back, staring at Richelieu. “Didn’t you want to come back?”

“Of course I did, “Richelieu said, standing up and stepping closer to Treville. Now he sounded downright offended. “However, the safety of France was undoubtedly jeopardized because of your actions. But you’ve never been the sensible sort.”

“France was in danger anyway!” Treville said, his voice rising. “It was falling apart without you.”

He knew perfectly well that he must look like a foolish person to Richelieu, with all his knowledge and tact and dignity. After all, what did he look like to him, really? Just a soldier who’d gotten lucky and spent his days getting sweaty and muddy. Treville had seen what happened when people rinsed off all the mud and sweat, and he’d barely recognized himself.

What would have happened if he had found Richelieu dead on that prison floor? What if it had been empty and they’d buried him in some mass grave, never to be found?

What if he hadn’t brought him back to Paris after all?

“That is an exaggeration, Captain,” Richelieu said, but he looked flattered. “Although I do appreciate the thought.”

Treville opened his mouth to shout something scalding, a part of him relishing the fact that they were fighting and that this was in fact real. But Richelieu held up a hand.

“You chose me,” Richelieu said. “The choice was: France or Richelieu, and you stupidly choice the latter. Even if finding me and hoping that I’d heal well enough to serve France as I did before was your justification, you still took a horrifying risk.”

“It was worth it,” Treville said. “Knowing that you might be in that prison and making the decision to leave you there wasn’t an option, Your Eminence.”

“Not one to leave a man behind, is that it?” Richelieu asked, throwing the question at Treville as if it were an insult. But Richelieu’s face was blotchy, as if he was holding back something that weighted heavily on his chest.

“You are the second most valuable man in France,” Treville said. “What is the loss of one aging solider in comparison?”

Richelieu blinked, looking taken aback.

“Captain?” he said. Richelieu adjusted his robes, a nervous movement.

Perhaps Treville had been wrong. Perhaps Richelieu didn’t see him as completely replaceable. He was, of course. That was the nature of being a Musketeer. One day he’d have to leave.

“Soldiers die,” Treville said. “Just like everyone else. You just asked me to remember my promises. I promised to die for France and one day I’ll fulfill that promise.”

“You are still alive,” Richelieu pointed out, his mouth a thin line.

“If I had died when I was trying to help you escape from that prison, I would have died for France, just as I promised to do, all those years ago,” Treville said. “You would have gone on and lived another thirty years without me.”

Richelieu was silent for a moment. He was so close to Treville that he could feel Richelieu’s breath on his neck. The room was warm and quiet.

“I’d prefer that you stayed alive and worked beside me,” Richelieu said. “Using what time we have together to the fullest.”

Treville frowned. Richelieu was smiling, looking oddly at peace, even if his hands were still shaking.

“You gave France back to me,” Richelieu said. “You ensured that I’d get my full position at court back and slept beside my bed so assassins wouldn’t attack me in my sleep. Do you really think I’d want you gone?”

Treville looked down to see that Richelieu had taken both of Treville’s hands in his own. Treville shook his head.

“Good,” Richelieu said, nodding.

“Good,” Treville repeated, smiling.

Neither of them let go of each other for some time. They stayed still in the fading rays of the setting sun until it was too dark to see. Only then did they say their goodbyes and left for home.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This fic needed a lot of editing, but I like how it turned out.


End file.
